


Singularity

by ottermo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Jake Griffin is a genius android inventor, Robot AU, also here there be Bellarke, and when I say 'may'..., eventually, slow-burning as you probably haven't seen it before, this may get him into serious trouble
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-05 09:17:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4174419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Everybody's got one - a friendly household robot to free up your time. After all, why waste hours on housework when Griffin Incorporated have designed the perfect Synthetic human to do it for you? Synthetics have no free will and no emotions, so you never need to feel bad about treating them like slaves.</p><p>That's the party line, anyway. But Jake Griffin's been holed up in that workshop for a long time, and he's created something that may well have crossed the line dividing robot from human, slavery from sentience. Something that might cost him his life, if the wrong people find out. </p><p>Marcus Kane is the wrong people. But he wasn't counting on Jake's daughter stepping into the breech...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jake

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Nobody asked for this. And yet, and yet.
> 
> My other stories were driving me crazy and I haven't updated anything for weeks. Then along came Humans, a little show about people-robots, and suddenly all I could think about was "but what if Leo was CLARKE?"
> 
> Please bear with this. I'd love to get feedback on it, but it's very strange and probably quite stupid at the moment, and a fair few familiar names might not come into their own, character-wise, just yet. On account of being robots, and all. And I am about as far away from a robotics expert as it is possible to get, but just.. let me know if you'd like to read more, hmm?

_NINE MONTHS AGO_

Eyes clicked open. Bright, just a little too green. 

They found Jake’s face – he saw the moment when the focus claimed him, recognised it from last time. A hand subconsciously made its way up to protect his neck, that memory of  _last time_ sending phantom shockwaves through him.

But today, no attack came. No vice-like grip on his neck today, no blackness at the edge of his vision; today he would not be forced to destroy his own creation in exchange for his next breath. 

He checked dials, readouts. The screen above the creature’s head blinked figures, diagnostics, predictions. Everything seemed – miraculously – fine. 

The code had worked. Somewhere deep down, he’d known it would, or at least hoped it so fervently it felt like knowledge. All those months of theorising – weeks shut up in his study, writing line after line of the code that could change everything, always knowing what it could come to. That it might mean his life, one way or another.

And now he’d done it. 

Almost definitely. 

He removed the Wernicke blocks on the count of three, careful not to disengage one side any sooner than the other. 

The eyes blinked open and shut, as if recalibrating. The head tilted to one side, and Jake half-smiled at the show of curiosity. Just a small movement, but enough to set his new friend apart from the host of Synthetics who couldn’t wonder, had never questioned or doubted. It was so…human. 

“Hello. My name is Jake Griffin.” 

He spoke the words concisely, never breaking contact with the glowing green orbs. 

“Your name is Jake Griffin.” 

He nodded, feeling the tingle of excitement he always got when a new Synthetic spoke to him for the first time – though this conversation had a lot more riding on it than the multitude of primary startups Jake had carried out. 

He nodded. “That’s right.” He gave a ‘thumbs up’ signal, noting the Synthetic’s mimicry of his action, smooth and subtle. Gone were the jerking movements of previous models, the halting gestures that set Synths apart from their human masters so obviously, even from a distance. The ninety-eights had been state of the art, masterpieces – designers raved about them, technicians marvelled, householders in their droves swarmed to upgrade, trade in their older, inferior machines. Even as far back as ninety-ones, the movements had been fluid enough, the faces adept in mimicking human expression, imitating emotion. But this, the hundred, Jake’s newest and brightest and best… he was glorious. Glowing. 

The hundred was  _alive_. 

“You are Jake Griffin. Who am I?”

Jake flicked his gaze to the bookshelf, where Arthur C. Clarke’s  _Space Odysseys_  were lined up neatly, an ever-present reminder of the little girl he’d named after his boyhood dream. At the end of the row, a handful of dusty hardbacks languished, unread for years now –  _Kindred. Empire of the Atom. The Silent Frontier._

The last volume, the one most worn with age, was Frank Bellamy’s  _Looking Backwards_. Jake looked back at the hundred, deciding that ‘Frank’ suited this one’s face about as much as his daughter would have suited ‘Arthur’. The surname it was, then. 

“Bellamy,” Jake said finally. “Your name is Bellamy.”

The features shifted, unmistakably a smile. “Bellamy. My name is Bellamy.”

Jake smiled back. And this was the test: 

“Do you like it?”

(‘ _Synthetic devices are incapable of preference. Pleasure, like all emotions, is divorced from logic, and does not enter the android mind. Opinion dwells in the soul, the human soul, and cannot be engineered_.’) 

Another tilt of the head. And this was the moment of truth:

“I do.”

 

* * *

_ SIX MONTHS AGO  _

“The other Synthetics, they aren’t awake?”

A screwdriver between his teeth, Jake shrugged one shoulder at Bellamy, before setting the tool down so he could speak. “Depends what you mean by awake. They can speak and move around, and carry things…”

“But they can’t _choose_ to? They don’t think?”

Jake took up the screwdriver again, made a tiny adjustment, clicking the smooth, new Synthetic jaw back into place. “They assess, analyse. Based on the information that’s in their data banks – in yours, too – and on their own experiences. But no,” he turned to face Bellamy briefly, “They don’t think like you can.”

Bellamy nodded, understanding. “It must be cold.”

“Maybe. But they’re not aware of it. Hold this, would you?”

Jake handed him a small bag of screws, some so tiny it hurt his eyes trying to see them, let alone put them in place. The Synthetic obediently stretched out a hand, holding the bag slightly open so Jake could take what he needed.

“Am I more like them, or more like you?”

Jake considered. Blasted sentience and its penchant for the philosophical. It was much easier to answer the fact-based queries posed by an ordinary Synth.

“I’m not sure,” he said, honestly. “Maybe you’ll be able to decide that one for me.” He gestured to the inert form of the new Synth, a model he’d been working on for the past three weeks, observed by the ever-inquisitive Bellamy every step of the way. “The two of you will be able to compare notes, soon.”

Bellamy watched Jake insert another miniscule screw, tongue peeking out ever so slightly in concentration. “You haven’t always worked alone.”

Jake chuckled. “What makes you say that?”

“You need somebody to hold things, pass you things. You speak out loud about things I don’t understand and wait for my answers. Also,” Bellamy swept the rest of the workshop with a wide gesture, “there are many work benches, and you use only this one. Other people were here once.”

“Very astute.” Jake reached for a long, metal probe, and began to run some checks. “There are other workshops, big factories, most Synths are assembled by machines now. This was just where we worked on the newest models.” He stood back slightly, surveyed the latest changes to his work. “But there’s a new place now. I’m the only one who still comes here. If the others knew… When other people find out about you, Bellamy, there might be problems.”

Bellamy nodded, remembering broaching this subject before. “The Singularity.”

“Which is?” Jake asked, nodding encouragement.

“The idea that technology will one day overreach humanity. That machines will be able to think for themselves, and improve themselves without needing humans at all. Many humans fear the Singularity. I must hide my true nature until humanity is more ready to accept it. Otherwise, they would seek to destroy me.”

“Good, you’ve got it,” Jake said, gently taking the bag of leftover screws.

“And also, they would kill you, Jake Griffin.”

Jake twitched slightly at this, but managed not to show his surprise too obviously. He nodded gravely. “They might, yes.” He glanced down at the nearly-finished Synthetic. “We’ll have to teach her all of this, too. You’ll all have to hide, for a little while.”

“Why create us now? Why not wait until the humans are ready for us?”

Jake shook his head. “They would never be ready. The theory is always more terrifying than the facts. But this way you can have some time to learn about them first, before they start to scrutinise your every motive.”

He watched Bellamy process the information. “You believe in humanity?”

Not a clear-cut question. “I believe in some of them,” Jake said. “And I believe in you.”

This seemed to satisfy Bellamy for the time being, and he too turned his attention to the new hundred model. “She’s nearly ready.”

Jake nodded in agreement. “Just a couple more days, then we’ll wake her up.” His eyes roamed the spines on the bookshelf once again, alighted on the words ‘The Silent Frontier’. A space saga – otherworldly, captivating, bringing back flashes of a honeymoon spent reading to Abby on a far-off beach. Its writer – Raven Oak. “I think I’ll call her Raven.”

 

* * *

_TWO MONTHS AGO_

“Who is the small human?”

Raven enlarged the image on the screen, pleased to teach her friend something new. “That’s Clarke. She is Jake’s daughter.”

The third Synthetic frowned. “He made her? Like he made us.”

“Not in the same way. Humans make humans by a different process. It doesn’t seem very efficient, but Jake was younger then.”

“And the other human…”

“…is Abby. She makes humans with Jake.”

Jake laughed from across the workshop, looking up from where he and Bellamy were both bent over what was to be the newest addition to their little Synthetic family. “That was _one time,_ Raven. We made hundreds of Synthetics together before that. And afterwards, too.”

“But not any more?” the third Synth asked.

“Not anymore.”

“Abby fears the Singularity,” Raven said, matter-of-factly.

Jake made a face. “Not exactly. She fears other humans who fear the Singularity. When all of this was just theory, she was just as excited about the idea as I was. But when it looked like I might actually succeed…”

“She forbade him to continue,” Raven finished.

“I promised her I’d give the idea up.”

“You lied to her.”

Jake conceded the point. “Humans do that more than they like to admit.”

“Normal Synths can’t lie,” Raven said, scornfully. “I can. And Bellamy can. Can you, Atom?”

Jake still found himself grinning at the name. The next book jacket on the shelf had been unhelpful in terms of names – he wasn’t keen on ‘A. E. van Vogt’, but the title, _Empire of the Atom_ , had saved his little ritual for the time being.

“No, I can’t.” Atom stated, and then burst into peals of laughter. It was actually the same short laughing sequence repeated again and again, but Jake had schooled his Synths in the art of adjusting the pitch and volume, ever so slightly, between circuits, so as to achieve an effect that was more natural-sounding. “I just told a lie! I said I couldn’t but I can, so it was a lie.”

Jake grinned and returned to his work, leaving Raven to educate Atom further. The delay between the two of them had only been a few weeks, since replicating the design got easier each time. Jake had initially decided to halt at three – Atom completed the little unit quite nicely, and really the less secretly-sentient Synthetics running around, the safer. But he’d seen how much Bellamy had relished helping to build Atom, how his nimble fingers had learnt to thread wires and tighten screws far faster than Jake could hope to, and how disappointed his oldest hundred seemed when the project was over.

A couple of months later, Jake had started work on a fourth hundred model – but start was more or less all he’d done. Bellamy was in his element. Over the past few weeks he’d worked on the new model with a single-minded devotion that took precedent over everything else in his world, with the necessary exception of nightly charging. Even Synthetics, Jake had reminded him, couldn’t go without their beauty sleep. Bellamy might have scorned the reference to the human function, but he’d been too engrossed in running cerebral circuits.

Jake passed Bellamy the screwdriver he asked for, grinning slightly at the role reversal. But Bellamy grinned back, excitement lighting up the too-green eyes still more, and Jake was content in the knowledge that Bellamy saw him as an equal, no longer a master, and never a slave.

The Singularity scaremongers had it half right. Machines could outdo humans – computers had been outdoing them for years, so had cars, aeroplanes, cameras and toasters. And Bellamy was just something different. Not something bad. 

 

* * *

_ONE MONTH AGO_  

“Are you ready?”

Jake half-smiled as he asked the question, but never got all the way there, seeing Bellamy’s hesitance, his…fear?

“It’s not over,” Jake reminded him. “This was just the preparation stage. Now you’ll be able to teach her everything, like I taught you, and we taught Raven, and Raven taught Atom.”

Bellamy nodded. “I know. I know all that. But what if it goes wrong?”

Jake fought the urge to roll his eyes. Nerves. Such a human trait. “Then you’ll fix it, big brother.”

Bellamy flinched at the term. “Synthetics cannot have biological siblings. That is a human concept.”

Jake shrugged. “We’ll make an exception. There’s got to be some way of describing what you did for her, and I won’t have you going around calling yourself her father. You’re designed to appear the same age, or similar. Humans wouldn’t like it.”

“Then she is…my sister?” Bellamy tried out the word, saying it slowly, carefully. His voice was so different from those first few parroted phrases on day one – he could shift intonations, pitch and speed effortlessly now.

Jake nodded in response. “Your sister. Your responsibility.”

“Have you thought of a name for her?” Bellamy asked, innocently enough, although Jake could hear a tiny note of hope that he’d delegate the duty.

“Your job, definitely,” Jake said warmly. He felt a sickly-sweet glow inside as he saw Bellamy’s gaze shift to the row of books on the shelf – a miniature legacy.

The fourth book, the one pressed right up against the last Space Odyssey, was _Kindred_ , by one O. E. Butler.

Bellamy raised the finished Synth to a standing position, and activated her by the switch under her chin. The startup chime sounded, and her eyes, green and vacant, became suddenly full of light as they focused in on Bellamy.

“Hello. My name is Bellamy. Your name is Octavia.”

And just like that, Jake Griffin knew.

Synthetics could _love_.


	2. Clarke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And over here on your left, some worldbuilding with Clarke and Wells... And some more concepts stolen from Humans. Highly recommended, by the way. Only four episodes so far but it's stunning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings -  
> Hints toward rape. Nothing graphic.   
> Also mild body horror, I guess. But it's a robot, so not _really_. 
> 
> And I will apologise to my fellow John Murphy lovers here for besmirching his good-ish name even more than it was already besmirched.

"You know," Clarke said, pausing for a moment to let a struggling Wells catch up, "it would literally take you ten seconds to call one of your dad's cars to pick you up."

Wells began a shrug of the shoulders, then seemed to think better of it and winced instead. "I'm fine," he insisted. "I can walk it off."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Yeah, no, you really can't." She waited for him to pause to rest the injured foot, and while he was still, she moved into the crook of his good arm. "C'mon, lean on me," she commanded, and silenced his protestations with a firm, "deal with it."

Once Wells had obediently dealt with it, the two of them shifted into the steady gait that had won them every three-legged race since they'd started school. The year Wells had his first major growth spurt, the teacher had discouraged them from entering due to the height difference - but as Clarke had pointed out at the time, it was only a matter of balancing each other out. The medal ribbons were blue that year.

"Better?" Clarke asked cheerfully, as they turned a corner at the top of the street.

"Yeah, you win," Wells replied, starting out begrudging, but eventually grinning. "One day I'll learn not to argue with you."

"Are you sure you don't want to call for a car?" Clarke asked. "I'm getting tired just watching you try."

Wells' mouth set in a thin line. "I'll walk."

"Okay," Clarke conceded, sensing not to push it. Things were at least a little strained between Wells and his father these days. He didn't often talk about it, but she knew Wells didn't agree with a lot of his father's policies, particularly his work on the ARC. He was always reluctant to use his father's endless funds for his own convenience, as if doing so would stamp his approval all over the fleet of cars, the Synthetic bodyguards and the private pool.

"And was there a reason Murphy and Mbege threw you in a supplies closet?" Clarke inquired. "I'm not even joking, Wells, pointing out their spelling mistakes is just not worth getting beaten up over..."

"Nah, I learned my lesson on that one," he assured her. "And in fairness we were only eleven." And it hadn't been the spelling, not really. Wells' super-rich background had earned him hatred from a lot of the other kids that he'd spent his entire childhood trying to combat. He was infuriatingly unwilling to blame the culprits for feeling the way they did.

"That's some nice avoiding you're doing, but you still haven't answered the question," Clarke said sweetly. "Why did they put you in there?"

"They didn't...it wasn't into a closet so much as...down some stairs," Wells admitted sheepishly.

"What?! They threw you down the stairs? Wells!"

"I didn't want you to freak out while we were still at school," he said, somewhat lamely. "Anyway, it's not like anything's broken."

"Really not the point, Wells! You can't antagonise guys like that! You might be bigger than them but they outnumber you and they're clearly _crazy_!"

"I didn't antagonise them," Wells said, calmly. "I was just trying to reason with them."

"Because that's always worked so well with John Murphy."

Wells ignored the jibe. "They were trying to hack one of the Synths....you know. It was messed up."

"Oh. Ugh," Clarke said in disgust. "How d'you know it was that mod?"

Wells raised his eyebrows. "Well, they might have just been trying to program her to dance the Macarena, but somehow, with guys like that, I don't think so."

Clarke hummed in agreement.

"They'd put a sack over her head so she couldn't get a visual. I couldn't just walk away."

"Which Synth was it?" she asked, mentally scrolling through the list of the Synthetics kept by the school as cleaners and maintenance workers.

Wells frowned, "I don't know the names. Blonde, medium height."

"Harper," Clarke said, glumly. Deep down she knew it didn't really make sense to have soft spots for certain Synths and not others, but she was a Griffin, after all. The more she learned about their design and creation, the more difficult it was to see them as pure mechanics. "I'll write her a block. But we need to report Murphy and Mbege." She didn't wait for Wells to offer his usual counter-argument. "I know you don't like snitching because you're an angel of happiness and peace, but this is serious, Wells. You could have been hurt even worse, and if they try to rapemod a Synth, how can we be sure-"

"I know." It was soft, but the words were enough to cut her off. "I already reported them to the school board. The Synth had sent a hacking alert on wireless, they just needed names."

"Oh." Clarke mentally berated herself for assuming the worst of her friend's no-snitch stance. Thinking about it, he'd never failed to report an incident where someone other than himself had been hurt. Apparently he applied it to Synths too. "Sorry. What did Rhodes say?"

Wells waved off her apology. "The usual. 'Remember, son. To those boys, a Synth is just a machine.' And then something ridiculous about how I'd surely rather they released their frustrations on a robot rather than put a real girl in danger. Because obviously _that's_ the point, and obviously the one would _never_ lead to the other."

Clarke huffed in frustration. "He makes me sick."

Wells sighed. "They'll get a couple of exclusion days for damaging school property. And then they'll come back and try a different mod."

"I'll get mom to write a full upgrade, then," Clarke said, grimly. "I could do it one at a time, but I'd need her to break the actual network."

"If only they'd just let you do it properly."

"Yeah, well. Not just Murphy and Mbege who only see them as machines."

They were nearing the turning for Clarke's road, but she didn't slow down. She was pleased to note that Wells didn't bother to argue. He was getting walked home whether he liked it or not.

"How are you going to explain your limp to your dad?" Clarke asked gently. For all his faults, Thelonious tried to be an attentive father. He was hardly not going to notice.

"I'll think of something suitably non-Synth-related," Wells assured her. "He doesn't need any more reason believe all the crap Kane and his lot throw at him."

Clarke nodded, recognising the surname from one of her parents' more heated discussions. Kane was a paranoid anti-Singularity activist and he was getting dangerously close to a powerful position in Android Robotics Control. Whatever he and his lackeys pushed for - a ban, a wipe, a shutdown virus - it wouldn't end particularly prettily, either for the Synths, Clarke's family, or the millions of people who relied on Synthetics for their healthcare and domestic help. It would mean sending real people back down into mines, into waste disposal plants and factory fumes. Little children would go back into the sweatshops their parents had been liberated from, pulled out of the schools that had only been built because the Synthetic workforce, cheap and lasting, had left economies free to bloom elsewhere. It would all be for nothing if Kane's scaremongering got enough people convinced that Synths were only one step away from being ruthless killing machines.

"It'll die down," Clarke said, with more confidence than she really felt. "There will always be people afraid of progress. Hasn't stopped anyone so far."

"Stopped your dad," Wells pointed out.

Clarke hummed. While it was true her father had withdrawn from the main Synth labs when the first protests had hit the headlines, she wasn't as sure as everyone else that he'd given up on robotics altogether. What worried her was he was just doing it beyond the ARC's jurisdiction now. Anything that happened behind their backs was happening in a danger zone.

"So he'd have you believe," she replied, mildly.

Wells frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I just mean you don't build ninety-eight models all reaching towards the same goal and stop before you get to a hundred. I just mean if dad's stopped, then... He _got_ there."

For a few seconds they walked on in silence, while Wells took this in. "You think....he made them sentient."

"I don't know for sure," Clarke said hurriedly, "I think probably not, yet, but I don't believe he's stopped trying. I don't think he ever could."

"Have you talked to him about it?"

"Not yet. I will, though."

"And do you think you can convince him to stop?"

Clarke stiffened, glared. "No, why would I do that? I'm going to help him."

Wells looked stunned. "Clarke, you can't--"

"I know I'd still have to go to school, but I can do both until I graduate. I can code as well as any of mom's assistants, if not better, and I--"

"I don't mean you _can't_ ," Wells clarified, "of course you _could_ help your father reach the Singularity, if you had a death wish! Do you honestly think Kane would let your father walk free if he did that? Obviously, he'd be clever about it, but no way would he let a brain with that capability carry on working. He's serious about this. Serious and crazy. Like Murphy, like Mbege, but with actual power and weapons and the ability to make anything he wants look like an accident."

Clarke let him finish. "I know."

"But if you know all this, then why--"

"Because you're right," she said, voice suddenly soft. "They'll kill him. They'll kill my dad. If he works alone, he has no-one to cover for him, they'll find out what he's doing and they'll kill him." Wells could hear the catch in her throat, and felt a shiver go down his spine. "And I won't let that happen. I won't let him die alone."

"Even if--"

She cut off his words and he was glad not to utter them. "It won't come to that. We'll be careful. But he needs someone he can trust on his side."

It struck Wells for about the millionth time that Clarke Griffin's loyalty knew no bounds. She was sometimes on the losing side, but you always knew she'd stand her ground. She'd stick by you.

And it cut both ways.

"All right. I'm in."

She flashed him a look of surprise, but he knew she wouldn't argue. They'd come as a package deal since she'd dragged Wells by the hand to take their first two faltering steps.

They'd fallen down back then, too.  
  


* * *

  
When Clarke got home, Jackson was in pieces on the floor.

She stepped over a detached arm on her way to the kitchen, the outstretched limb perfect and skin-like right up to the metal coils sticking out of one end, where it had been detached from the shoulder.

"Hi mom," she said, grinning as the scientist looked up from where she was re-routing wires in the torso, screwdriver between her teeth and a pencil holding her hair in a hurried bun. Her mother mumbled a cheery greeting as best as she could, unable to remove the screwdriver with the two large coils of wire tangled around her hands.

"Hi, Jackson," Clarke added, waving at the Synth's head, which was propped up on a pillow on the couch, as if watching the repair work.

The eyes swivelled to find her. "Hello, Clarke."

She giggled, taken aback. "You left his head turned on?" she asked her mother incredulously. "What's the point? The stand-alone battery won't last."

Abby fed a bright red wire very carefully through some tubing, never letting go of the rest of the wires with her other three fingers. She nodded toward Jackson, so Clarke looked to him for an explanation.

"I'm watching Abby work, so that if the next malfunction is routine, I can repair my own circuits."

"Oh, okay. Fair enough," Clarke said, amiably. It seemed a bit off, though. Usually her mother would never do anything to simulate Synth self-sufficiency, even as an experiment. Abby might not agree with all of the Control's rulings, but she did her level best to abide by the ones that mattered. The ones they might kill you over.

Clarke wandered into the kitchen to get herself a glass of water, and sipped it as she watched her mother work. When Abby had finally finished with the wires and put them back into place, she asked, all innocence, "So whose idea was it for Jackson to do his own repairs?"

Abby chuckled. "Mine, of course. Who else is here?"

Clarke raised her eyebrows. "There's Jackson."

Abby looked up at her daughter, curious, as if searching Clarke's face to find out if she were serious. "Sweetheart...Jackson doesn't have _ideas_. He does exactly what I tell him to do. No more." Clarke nodded obediently, but Abby got to her feet and levelled with her daughter, one hand on each of Clarke's shoulders, suddenly too earnest. "Clarke, please don't joke about things like this. Jackson isn't alive. There's no way for Synthetics become sentient. All right? Say it for me."

Clarke resisted the strong temptation to roll her eyes. "There's no way for Synthetics to become sentient," she parroted. "You never used to be so sure."

Abby narrowed her eyes, ever so slightly, but enough for Clarke to see she'd noticed the barbed comment. "Don't be silly, Clarke. It was only ever an intellectual exercise, for me and for your father too. He wanted to try. He stopped." She paused, but Clarke didn't speak. "It's impossible to achieve, and nothing we learn from trying would be worth the price... _some_ people...would pay to make sure it never happened."

"I get it, mom," Clarke said, as lightly as she could manage. _Nothing suspicious here._ "Can I go get changed now?"

Abby seemed to snap back to the present suddenly, her features softening. Crisis over. She let go of Clarke's shoulders. "Sure, honey." Abby took the glass, empty now of water, from her daughter's hand.  
  


* * *

  
A little while later, Jake's _Griffin Inc._ van pulled into the drive. The sound of gravel scattering in the wake of the wheels made Clarke look up from her laptop screen and spot him out of the window, his black Griffin Inc. polo shirt flapping in the early evening breeze. As far as anyone knew, Jake still worked within the company, in the computing department, having given up on applied robotics for good. Clarke watched him approach the front door, keen for any clue that her suspicions to the contrary were correct. But if her father was keeping a secret, he'd been covering it up for months. He'd have learnt to bury it deep.

After finishing the bug fix she'd been working on, Clarke closed the laptop and made her way downstairs.

"Hi, princess," said her father on seeing her. Clarke chuckled at the ridiculous nickname, leftover from a first grade almost entirely spent dressed as Cinderella. (Wells still occasionally thought it appropriate to call her Clarkerella, but only when he was in the mood for getting a slap).

"Hi, old man." She accepted the customary kiss on the cheek, and followed him into the sitting room. Her phone buzzed against her hip, and she slipped it from her pocket to read the message. It buzzed again almost immediately.

New message: Wells Jaha (1)  
 _Clarke. Turn on the news._

New message: Wells Jaha (2)  
 _Now._


End file.
